Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.

Das Piratenboot: 1915

1915. "Eitel Friedrich, German ship taken over by U.S." The commerce raider Eitel Friedrich, a former passenger liner converted into an auxiliary cruiser for the German navy early in World War I, put into port at Newport News, Virginia, for repairs in March 1915 after sinking a number of British ships (and one U.S. merchant vessel) and taking on more than 300 British and French prisoners. After almost a month the captain decided to intern, and the vessel was towed to the Philadelphia Navy Yard, where she remained under the German flag until being seized by the U.S. government in April 1917. (Harris & Ewing.) View full size.

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.